Thomas Browne: Quotes about the world

“I thanke God for my happy Dreams|dreames, as I doe for my good rest, for there is a satisfaction in them unto reasonable desires, and such as can be content with a fit of happinesse; and surely it is not a melancholy conceite to thinke we are all asleepe in this world, and that the conceits of this life are as meare dreames to those of the next, as the Phantasmes of the night, to the conceit of the day. There is an equall delusion in both, and the one doth but seeme to bee the embleme or picture of the other;”

Thomas Browne book Religio Medici

Section 12
Religio Medici (1643), Part II

Life , God , World , Dreams

“And surely, he that hath taken the true Altitude of Things, and rightly calculated the degenerate state of this Age, is not like to envy those that shall live in the next, much less three or four hundred Years hence, when no Man can comfortably imagine what Face this World will carry.”

Thomas Browne

Letter to a Friend (circa 1656)

Age , World , Imagination , Envy

“Thus is man that great and true Amphibium, whose nature is disposed to live not only like other creatures in diverse elements, but in divided and distinguished worlds.”

Thomas Browne book Religio Medici

Section 34
Religio Medici (1643), Part I

World , Nature

“In the deep discovery of the Subterranean world, a shallow part would satisfy some enquirers.”

Thomas Browne book Hydriotaphia, Urn Burial

Source: Hydriotaphia, Urn Burial (1658), Chapter I

World , Parting

“I could be content that we might procreate like trees, without conjunction, or that there were any way to perpetuate the world without this trivial and vulgar act of coition; It is the foolishest act a wise man commits in all his life, nor is there anything that will more deject his cooled imagination, when he shall consider what an odd and unworthy piece of folly he hath committed.”

Thomas Browne book Religio Medici

Section 9
Religio Medici (1643), Part II

Life , World , Way , Imagination

“The severe Schools shall never laugh me out of the Philosophy of Hermes, that this visible world is but a picture of the invisible.”

Thomas Browne book Religio Medici

Section 12
Religio Medici (1643), Part I

World , School

“There is no man alone, because every man is a Microcosm, and carries the whole world about him.”

Thomas Browne book Religio Medici

Section 10
Religio Medici (1643), Part II

World

“The world that I regard is my selfe, it is the Microcosme of mine owne frame, that I cast mine eye on; for the other, I use it but like my Globe, and turne it round sometimes for my recreation. Men that look upon my outside, perusing onely my condition, and fortunes, do erre in my altitude; for I am above Atlas his shoulders.”

Thomas Browne book Religio Medici

Section 12
Religio Medici (1643), Part II

Men , World

“Were the happiness of the next world as closely apprehended as the felicities of this, it were a martyrdom to live.”

Thomas Browne book Hydriotaphia, Urn Burial

Source: Hydriotaphia, Urn Burial (1658), Chapter IV

World , Happiness

“For the world, I count it not an Inn, but a Hospital, and a place, not to live, but to die in.”

Thomas Browne book Religio Medici

Section 11
Religio Medici (1643), Part II

World

“A Dialogue between two Infants in the womb concerning the state of this world, might handsomely illustrate our ignorance of the next, whereof methinks we yet discourse in Plato's Den, and are but Embryon Philosophers.”

Thomas Browne book Hydriotaphia, Urn Burial

Source: Hydriotaphia, Urn Burial (1658), Chapter IV

World

“To make an end of all things on Earth, and our Planetical System of the World, he (God) need but put out the Sun”

Thomas Browne

Letter to a Friend (circa 1656)

God , World , Sun

“I believe the world grows near its end, yet is neither old nor decayed, nor will ever perish upon the ruins of its own principles.”

Thomas Browne book Religio Medici

Section 45
Religio Medici (1643), Part I

World

“Times before you, when even the living men were Antiquities; when the living might exceed the dead, and to depart this world, could not be properly said, to go unto the greater number.”

Thomas Browne book Hydriotaphia, Urn Burial

Dedication
Hydriotaphia, Urn Burial (1658)

Men , World , Time , Dead

“But how shall we expect charity towards others, when we are uncharitable to ourselves? Charity begins at home, is the voice of the world, yet is every man his greatest enemy, and as it were, his own executioner.”

Thomas Browne book Religio Medici

Section 4
Religio Medici (1643), Part II

World , Home

“The created World is but a small Parenthesis in Eternity.”

Thomas Browne book Christian Morals

Part III, Section XXIX
Christian Morals (first pub. post. 1716)

World